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Forums - Nintendo - Emily Rogers: Switch has 4GB of ram in RETAIL units, leaked specs might not be farfetched

Soundwave said:
Miyamotoo said:

You mentioned PS3, I will mention that Wii U have 3-4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360 and yet multiplatform games on Wii U in some cases worked worse, furthermore Xbox had twice RAM of PS2 memory and they played same game. Offcourse Its always better to have more RAM, power, etc, but point is that RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck and you can always make games using less RAM.

PS4 Pro got more than twice stronger GPU than regular PS4, they cloced CPU and they add just 1GB RAM for machine that will have even native support for 4k games, that's actually very small upgrade RAM compared for huge boost in power of GPU. Why!? Beacuse 8GB is already more than enuf for regualr PS4 and for PS4 Pro they add just 1GB of RAM.

 

RAM want Wii U problem at all, Wii U bottleneck was CPU not amount of RAM, Wii U RAM was enuf for purpose of console 720p/60fps console. Saying that, 4GB is enuf for purpose of Switch and actualy Switch hardware will very balanced with 4GB of RAM.

 

You will not see that advantage at all, Wii U Ram was DDR3 .

It seems that Switch is using Pascal, and Pascal is capable for 50-70GB/sec.

Wii U was using DDR3 as it's slow pool of main RAM, but it had a blazing fast eDRAM (32MB of it), which is actually probably the most technically impressive part of the Wii U. 

Yes, actualy Nintendo always using more adanced or fast RAM, so hardly they will use 25GB/s memory speed for Switch. It seems that Wii U has 32GB/s, so it would be crazzy going with Switch with slower memory when hardware will around 2-3x times stronger.



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Actually I suspect a huge part of the reason why Nintendo chose Nvidia and ditched AMD and others is because Nvidia's tiling approach dramatically reduces the amount of memory bandwidth needed.

AMD's approach of either having eDRAM/eSRAM or GDDR5 is not workable on a mobile device, it would kill the battery very quickly and cause heating problems.

25GB/sec with a large L2/L3 cache should allow for "better than" PS3/Wii U visuals, and I think that was good enough for Nintendo as long as they got their portability. Done deal for Nvidia.



Soundwave said:
Actually I suspect a huge part of the reason why Nintendo chose Nvidia and ditched AMD and others is because Nvidia's tiling approach dramatically reduces the amount of memory bandwidth needed.

AMD's approach of either having eDRAM/eSRAM or GDDR5 is not workable on a mobile device, it would kill the battery very quickly and cause heating problems.

25GB/sec with a large L2/L3 cache should allow for "better than" PS3/Wii U visuals, and I think that was good enough for Nintendo as long as they got their portability. Done deal for Nvidia.

Also it seems that Wii U has 32GB/s, so it would be crazzy going with Switch with slower memory bandwith when hardware will be around 2-3x times stronger than Wii Us. 

Most logical assume is that is chip Pascal based beacuse Pascal 50GB/s, maybe they can also have large L2/L3 cache, beacuse we already know that this chip is custom Tegra.



Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:
Actually I suspect a huge part of the reason why Nintendo chose Nvidia and ditched AMD and others is because Nvidia's tiling approach dramatically reduces the amount of memory bandwidth needed.

AMD's approach of either having eDRAM/eSRAM or GDDR5 is not workable on a mobile device, it would kill the battery very quickly and cause heating problems.

25GB/sec with a large L2/L3 cache should allow for "better than" PS3/Wii U visuals, and I think that was good enough for Nintendo as long as they got their portability. Done deal for Nvidia.

Also it seems that Wii U has 32GB/s, so it would be crazzy going with Switch with slower memory bandwith when hardware will be around 2-3x times stronger than Wii Us. 

Most logical assume is that is chip Pascal based beacuse Pascal 50GB/s, maybe they can also have large L2/L3 cache, beacuse we already know that this chip is custom Tegra.

Wii U's embedded RAM is a good deal above 32GB/sec I'm pretty sure.

I think 25GB/sec is enough for what Nintendo wants, given Nvidia's tiling set up, it's enough to give you somewhat better than Wii U graphics in a portable form factor, and 25GB/sec saves precious battery life. 



I guess the more pertinent point besides just RAM/bandwidth is Emily says her sources told her the custom Tegra chip in the NS is similar to the Tegra X1.

If that's the case, then it doesn't matter how much RAM or bandwidth it has, a Tegra X1-ish processor is simply not on par with even an XBox One.



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Soundwave said:
Miyamotoo said:

Also it seems that Wii U has 32GB/s, so it would be crazzy going with Switch with slower memory bandwith when hardware will be around 2-3x times stronger than Wii Us. 

Most logical assume is that is chip Pascal based beacuse Pascal 50GB/s, maybe they can also have large L2/L3 cache, beacuse we already know that this chip is custom Tegra.

Wii U's embedded RAM is a good deal above 32GB/sec I'm pretty sure.

I think 25GB/sec is enough for what Nintendo wants, given Nvidia's tiling set up, it's enough to give you somewhat better than Wii U graphics in a portable form factor, and 25GB/sec saves precious battery life. 

 

Soundwave said:
I guess the more pertinent point besides just RAM/bandwidth is Emily says her sources told her the custom Tegra chip in the NS is similar to the Tegra X1. 

If that's the case, then it doesn't matter how much RAM or bandwidth it has, a Tegra X1-ish processor is simply not on par with even an XBox One.

Actualy its metter, like I wrote, Switch hardware will be around 3x stronger than WiI U so there is no chanche that Nintendo will use slower RAM than Wii U has for Switch, it doensnt make any sense. Also fact is that Nintendo always pay attention on memory and that's actually most advanced feature of their hardware.

You forgeting that Switch isnt only handheld, its home console and with around 3x stronger hardware than Wii U, so it want be just "somewhat better than Wii U graphics", difference would be very obvious compared to Wii U graphics.

Tegra X2 is also similar to X1, main difference between X1 and X2 is efficiency and bigger memory bandwidth.



Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:
a Tegra X1-ish processor is simply not on par with even an XBox One.

Actualy its metter, like I wrote

Sigh... no it's not.



Miyamotoo said:
Fight-the-Streets said:
My point is that people at Nintendo do know that the RAM is a crucial thing. They made the mistake there already with the Wii U, they will not repeat it, so if they go with 4 GB, they must be sufficient, they have check it (also with 3rd parties).

RAM want Wii U problem at all, Wii U bottleneck was CPU not amount of RAM, Wii U RAM was enuf for purpose of console 720p/60fps console. Saying that, 4GB is enuf for purpose of Switch and actualy Switch hardware will very balanced with 4GB of RAM.

RAM was also a bottleneck for the Wii U, since the OS took 1 GB and only left 1 GB for developers.

I expect the OS-footprint of the Nintendo Switch to be much smaller than 1 GB... probably around 0.5 GB. The other 3.5 GB will probably be available for game developers.

With 3.5x available RAM compared to the Wii U, the Switch will do fine. 



Eh, I don't know what this huge speculation threads are all about. You are throwing speculated not confirmed numbers around and try to makes something out of it.
We've been only presented with the concept so far and that's it. All the rest of information will be shown in 2017.

I just wait and see what Nintendo has in store and will decide then, if they've missed the shot or not.
I know that Nintendo always follows the philosophy of being different and not trying to compete with Sony and Microsoft, but 3rd party publishers don't really share that philosophy. Their philosophy is to make as much money with a product they can. I applaud Nintendo's attitude for still being innovative and trying something out where nowadays everyone else plays it safe and just upgrades the hardware, but I also wish that Nintendo would go all out and show that they still can offer a platform for everyone to use.



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3

Conina said:
Miyamotoo said:

RAM want Wii U problem at all, Wii U bottleneck was CPU not amount of RAM, Wii U RAM was enuf for purpose of console 720p/60fps console. Saying that, 4GB is enuf for purpose of Switch and actualy Switch hardware will very balanced with 4GB of RAM.

RAM was also a bottleneck for the Wii U, since the OS took 1 GB and only left 1 GB for developers.

I expect the OS-footprint of the Nintendo Switch to be much smaller than 1 GB... probably around 0.5 GB. The other 3.5 GB will probably be available for game developers.

With 3.5x available RAM compared to the Wii U, the Switch will do fine. 

1GB RAM for games is 3-4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360 have. Like I wrote, 1GB for games for is enuf for purpose of Wii U, to be 720p console, while CPU was actual bottleneck because it's less powerful than PS3/Xbox360 CPUs despite Wii U had 3-4 more RAM and stronger GPU.

I expecting around 1GB of Switch RAM for OS, and definitely 3x more RAM for games than Wii U have will definitely enough and on pair and in balanced with rest of Switch specs.